The Sensitivity of Animals

There is great debate between devoted pet owners and the scientific community whether animals have psychic abilities or are very sensitive to their environment. There are many stories that are commonly told such as the cat that jumps up on the windowsill everyday just before the owner comes home, or the dog that barks just before the telephone rings. The beloved pet that somehow becomes lost on the family trip, miraculously finds its way home, travelling hundreds of km/s over along period of time, and animals that can sense storms or earth quacks before they happen.

How are these things possible? Do pets possess that ability that allows them to tune in or understand human actions, or even see into the future? Or is it simply those animals are more in tune with their environment than their human masters. Many animals such as dogs and cats can hear much better than humans, hearing frequencies way beyond human listening abilities. Animals such as dogs have acute sense of smell, other animals can see into the infrared spectrum or sense electromagnetic fields.

Rupert Sheldrake, Author of “Dogs Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home” believes that animals have abilities that humans may have possessed at one time in the early period of human evolution but some how lost this ability as the threat to survival has diminished.

Our pets, dogs, cats, horses etc. inherited super sensitive abilities from their ancestors. In the wild, animals with super sensitive abilities would have a greater chance of survival than those without. This ability would be useful to give warning to a herd about a predator. Animals having the ability to migrate long distances to find food and water, anticipating an attack from another animal not in sight, animals that have the ability to sense a dangerous place or where to find a safe place.

Animals have been our companions for thousands of years. The human race saw the advantages having some of these animals doing a variety of jobs because of their special abilities. One of the first working animals to come to mind was the dog. Man’s best friend originally was used for hunting, herding animals and protection. In resent times they have been used for bomb detection, sniffing out illegal drugs and food, rescue, missing people, cancer detection, assisting people with disabilities and of course the loyal family pet.

Another animal in this category is the horse, which carried human civilization on its back for thousands of years until very recently. They have abilities more than just transport. Some horses are used in remote areas to help humans searchers cover large areas of rugged terrain. Their natural awareness of their surroundings will often alert human handlers to the presence of anything unusual, including lost travelers, hunters, hikers and others. Like some dogs some horses can be trained to follow a scent. Another job not known by many is that on occasions miniature ponies are used as Seeing Eye Horses for blind people, similar to Seeing Eye Dogs. Certain breeds of horse also have a special sense called “Cow Sense” that allows them to effectively carry the right place at the right time to muster livestock.

Pigs can do similar jobs to dogs as they have a much better smell sense than humans. They are used to find the valuable product of truffles, especially in France. Sniffer pigs can detect contraband such as illegal drugs and food.

Other animals to be used by people are dolphins by the Navy (USA) to carry markers to attach mines to ships. Maybe one of the strangest animals to be used is the rat, not as reptile food or laboratory experiments, but to be trained to find and identify land mines. They are much lighter than dogs and are less likely set of a land mine. Rats have also been trained to sniff out and identify diseases especially deadly pulmonary tuberculosis.

So what of the pussy cat? They have been domesticated for thousands of years, even worshiped by different civilizations but they have only managed to get the most menial of jobs. They were used as mousers protecting food supplies from rodents and birds. They are very intelligent and highly sensitive to their environment but as most people know who own cats they are their own masters, we are there to look after them not the other way around and would be too difficult to train.